Modular dual-arm robot cell automates repair disassembly tasks
A Modular Dual-Arm Robotic Cell for Disassembly and Repair of Industrial Control Electronics
Robotics
Summary
Repairing industrial control electronics is tricky because these devices weren’t made to be taken apart by robots. The authors designed a robotic setup with two arms, cameras, sensors, and smart software to carefully remove screws, connectors, and circuit boards while avoiding damage. Their system combines a detailed plan of how parts fit together with real-time sensing and tool control to handle different repair tasks. It also lets human operators step in via teleoperation and learns from demonstrations to improve its contact skills.
What this means in practice
- •For industrial automation engineers: Integrate dual-arm robotic cells to automate disassembly and repair of industrial control electronics with flexible tool use and sensor feedback.
- •For robotic teleoperation teams: Use the modular ROS 2-based system to remotely control and assist robotic repair tasks with real-time sensing and fallback behaviors.
Authors
Maximilian Ruhe, Fabian Harlacher, Christian Friedrich, Martin Kipfmueller
Abstract
Industrial control electronics such as programmable logic controllers, servo drives and operator panels are routinely repaired in plant maintenance, but were never designed for automated disassembly. This paper presents a modular dual-arm robotic cell for repair-oriented disassembly, using two collaborative manipulators, interchangeable tools, red-green-blue-depth (RGB-D) and wristlevel perception, force/torque sensing and a Robot Operating System (ROS) 2- based control with Behavior Tree (BT) execution, teleoperation, digital-twin support and bounded learning-based contact skills. The process is decomposed into sequence planning, symbolic execution with fallbacks, force-limited tool skills, visual condition assessment and demonstration-based adaptation. A CADderived device graph encodes the disassembly order, access constraints, tools, feasible removal directions and verification states and converts them into operation objects for the BT and motion layers. Grounded in three representative devices, the cell covers screw removal, damaged-fastener fallback, snap-fit opening, connector release, cooperative printed circuit board (PCB) extraction and condition-based repair decisions. The main contribution is an architecture linking sequence knowledge, perception, verification and force-aware skills through one ROS 2 interface across simulation, teleoperation and real hardware.